An Amazon employee found herself struggling financially due to being underpaid and decided to reach out directly to the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, via email.
In 2020, Tara Jones was taking care of her newborn when she noticed a discrepancy in her paycheck; $90 was missing out of the $540 she was supposed to receive.
Despite reporting the issue, it persisted, causing Tara to fall behind on her bills.
Feeling overwhelmed by her financial situation, Tara took the bold step of emailing Bezos in hopes of resolving the issue.
“I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up,” Tara wrote to the tech billionaire in an email, as reported by The New York Times.
“I’m crying as I write this email.”
Her email prompted an internal investigation that revealed she was not alone in experiencing this problem.
The investigation uncovered that not only was Tara’s warehouse affected, but 179 other locations potentially faced similar issues.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel indicated that the company only completed compensating its affected employees months after initiating the investigation.
In addition to Tara’s case, another Amazon employee, James Watts from Chattanooga, Tennessee, experienced a disruption in his disability payments for several months in early 2021, affecting his financial situation.
The underlying problem seemed to be related to software, which is believed to have been fixed.
In response to The New York Times’ critical report, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told The Independent: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave.
“The New York Times article suggested these issues are widespread and ongoing. They are not. We went back and audited the period in question to make sure employees received their pay, and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues.”
Since these problems arose, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded Bezos in July 2021, has committed to improving the company’s leave system with the aim of becoming ‘Earth’s best employer.’